OeHI Connects - June 2018
Colorado's Health IT Roadmap
The Office of eHealth Innovation (OeHI) and the eHealth Commission continue to advance Colorado's Health IT Roadmap in 2018. Implementation planning is under way for many of the Roadmap's key initiatives. State funding for nine Roadmap initiatives has been appropriated and OeHI's request for federal funding match was submitted to the Centers

Several Roadmap initiatives are highlighted in this quarter's newsletter and each month at the eHealth Commission meetings. At the May and June eHealth Commission meeting,
Care Coordination, Consumer Engagement, Patient Identity, and Provider Identity initiatives were discussed. OeHI is moving forward efforts to define approaches and specific projects for these initiatives.

On March 14th- Colorado's Health IT Roadmap Launch Event - OeHI co-hosted a launch event with the Colorado Chapter of Health Information Management System Society (HIMSS) at the Alliance Center in Denver. Over 150 individuals attended, including Hal Wolf, President of HIMSS. Dr. Patrick J. Guffey, pediatric anesthesiologist and President of Colorado HIMSS, delivered the keynote address, reiterating the importance of effective Health IT and its direct impact on patients. Special thanks to those who attended this milestone event. Below are a few pictures from the event.
Visit OeHI's website for more information on Roadmap initiaitves an download a copy of Colorado's Health IT Roadmap today!
Spotlight on Roadmap Initiatives
Support Care Coordination in Communities
This Health IT Roadmap Initiative- Support Care Coordination in Communities Statewide is focused on developing, supporting, and enhancing technical approaches that can be used to easily share care coordination information – within and across – communities. This initiative recognizes that approaches to care coordination may be unique to individual communities. 

Colorado’s health care reform goals require care coordination across the continuum of care. As Colorado implements emerging models of value-based care and payment methods, the need for tools to support care coordination across communities, consumers, providers, and services, will continue to grow.
Boulder County Connect
In May 2016, Boulder County launched the online tool Boulder County Connect , allowing Boulder County residents to easily access and manage their own supports and benefits in a single online portal. The site allows clients to see the status of their cases in real-time, find out what documents may be needed, and upload those documents directly to Connect , from anywhere at anytime.

Now, Boulder County Department of Human Services is partnering with CORHIO, Colorado's largest health information exchange to scale the Connect program by developing a more sophisticated API, an improved data governance system, and by expanding hosting and data storage capabilities. Through this partnership, Boulder County and CORHIO hope to integrate social determinants of health and clinical data to identify the right interventions for individuals and to properly match them with the right services at the right time. For more information, check out CORHIO and Boulder County's eHealth Commission presentation here.
Promote and Enable Consumer Engagement, Empowerment, and Health Literacy
This Health IT Roadmap Initiative- Promote and Enable Consumer Engagement, Empowerment, and Health Literacy is focused on developing and implementing tools to educate, engage, and empower consumers in their health and well-being. Colorado has a long and successful history of engagement and collaboration with its residents. Colorado’s goal to become the healthiest state will require leveraging and continuing to build stakeholder empowerment as consumers become more engaged in actively pursuing better health and well-being.
9Health/OeHI Consumer Survey
In May, 9Health, in collaboration with OeHI, released a consumer health survey with the tripartite goal of discovering consumer health circumstances in Colorado, informing Colorado's Health IT Roadmap, and identifying opportunities to improved digital health services in Colorado. Nearly 500 responded to the survey, and some the key findings are presented below. For more detailed results, review the June eHealth Commission presentation here.

  • 95% of respondents rate their health as a 3 or better out of 5.
  • 89% of respondents are insured and 82% have a primary care provider (PCP).
  • 80% review their 9Health Fair screening results with a PCP.
  • Consumers rated "quick access to my own health data" smartphone application as most helpful to achieving best health.
Digital Health Innovation
This Health IT Roadmap Initiative- Digital Health Innovation is focused on facilitating programs, processes, and partnerships that foster health-related innovation in Colorado. 

Colorado has one of the nation’s leading health and digital health innovation ecosystems in the country. Several hundred innovative companies have formed in Colorado and they have developed solutions that are changing the health care landscape. Longstanding companies and health providers are also innovating. Colorado’s innovation community is one of the state’s most significant digital health assets
Prime Health/OeHi Innovation Summit
Thursday, May 10th - In a moving morning keynote, Kim Bimestefer, HCPF's Executive Director, set the stage for the second annual Prime Health/OeHi Innovation Summit. Acknowledging not only the challenges facing Medicaid, but also the incredible opportunities for innovation, Ms. Bimestefer noted, "We live in a time and space when the evolutions in healthcare over the next couple of decades should dwarf all of evolutionary progress in technology in our lifespans. Think of the power of that."

Panelists on the Care Coordination Panel that followed discussed opportunities for applying technology to close the loop between social services and healthcare. Gary Drews, CEO of 9HealthFair, emphasized the importance of empowering the consumer to be both health literate and aware of available services. Thursday's second panel focused on data liquidity. Topics included data accessibility, healthcare data silos, and data standardization, and Patrick Gordon of Rocky Mountain Health Plan summed up the value of data liquidity, stating, "To get to whole person health, we need whole person data."

Lt. Governor Donna Lynne addressed the innovation community in her lunch keynote: "You are our important partner to help push us and press us and continue to teach us about some of the breakthroughs that you're coming up with so that we can continue to make improvements in the quality of Colorado's healthcare."

Next, Peter Antall, MD of American Well and Todd Evers, COO of MGMA outlined trends in virtual care. Dr. Antall highlighted the power of virtual care to address market inefficiencies in specialist access, while Todd Evers challenged technologists in the room to design products that subtract processes, rather than add additional steps for providers. Later, Barbara Martin, Director of SIM, moderated a panel on technological solutions for integrating care. The day's final panels covered the potential for blockchain in healthcare and value-based reimbursement models.

Afternoon breakout sessions explored Care Coordination, the Colorado Longitudinal Study, Approaches to Integrated Care, and Blockchain in Healthcare.

Thank you to all who attended, and we hope discussions at the Summit continue to inform your work as together we strive to continually improve healthcare in Colorado!
10.10.10 Cities (Health) 2018
This year's 10.10.10 Cities (Health) brought ten serial entrepreneurs to Denver to tackle ten wicked problems over ten days. With advice and assistance from validators, industry professionals with experience and contacts in the healthcare industry who helped to refine the entrepreneurs' vision, the prospective CEOs developed novel ideas tackling complicated challenges. Validators included OeHI's own Carrie Paykoc and Mary Anne Leach as well as several other HCPF employees. Some exciting potential impact ventures include a data-driven early warning system for identifying and responding to teen mental health crises and a co-working space for neurodiverse individuals and the companies that employ them.

Stay tuned in on 10.10.10's website (by clicking the icon below) and follow the prospective CEOs as they turn potential ventures into ventures that deliver both financial and social ROI.
Health IT Policy
Colorado Chapter HIMSS Advocacy Day
April 26 - Morning discussions at this year's 9th Annual Advocacy Day focused on three initiatives from the Colorado Health IT Roadmap: Care Coordination, Patient Access to Health Information, and Uniquely Identifying a Patient Across Systems. The image on the left is Lieutenant Governor, Donna Lynne in the Old Supreme Court Chambers proclaiming April 26th Health IT Day and providing remarks on the importance of health information exchange and health information technology. Afternoon speakers discussed the importance of Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Recovery Planning.
Thank you to HIMSS Colorado and to all who attended Advocacy Day at the Capitol.
Your participation is vital to improving health in Colorado!
eHealth Commissioner Spotlight
Commissioner Spotlight 
Jon Gottsegen
Chief Data Officer
Colorado Governor's Office of Information Technology

How did you get into your field and what did your journey entail? I'm a little different from most of the others on the Commission, not having direct experience in the health care industry. I've been Chief Data Officer for Colorado for two years. Before that I was, and I still am, the State's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Coordinator. The need to share geographic data and make those data more accessible led me into the CDO role to try to solve these problems of sharing, accessibility and collaboration to data in general. As State GIS Coordinator, I didn't have much opportunity to work with health and human services data, so my work as CDO has been quite a learning experience. However, I've always been interested in analyzing data to create information to support better decision making. I started by applying GIS to environmental planning, assessing landscapes for appropriateness of land uses. I began this work in New Jersey state government where we were developing a statewide growth management plan for the state. This involved considerable collaboration and sharing with other state agencies and, even more significantly, local governments. We used spatial information as a framework to compare local land use plans and the state plan. This process was interesting and reasonably successful, but more important, my family was born from it...literally. I met my wife through this plan "cross acceptance" process. I guess one could say I took this collaboration very seriously. Subsequently, I continued with GIS technology, moving to Santa Barbara, where I didn't finish a PhD in Geography but had two babies, then transplanting to Salt Lake City where I supported emergency management planning and disaster preparedness with a small consulting firm and then landing in Colorado. Living on the east side of Denver is already too far from the mountains, so we have no plans to move again. When I have the time I love to be in those mountains hiking or just being.

Is there an issue that the Roadmap pinpoints that is of particular interest to you? 
 Several of the initiatives of the Roadmap speak to the things I've mentioned. Of course, the data sharing issue is closest to me professionally, but care coordination and empowering and educating consumers on health care are of great personal interest. It is very exciting to me to see such committed, concerned and, dare I say, brilliant members of the health community in Colorado put their heads together on the commission to address some of the wicked problems and improve the quality of life of the residents of our state.